Dublin

Dublin - darkometer rating : 2 - The capital city of the Republic of Ireland is one of the great cities in Europe. It's a wonderful place to visit anyway, and for the tastes of the dark tourist there a few sites well worth seeking out as well. > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos What there is to see: For the dark tourist, the choice isn't particularly rich, but in addition to a number of minor sites, it includes one superb prison-turned-museum that is absolutely unmissable: - Kilmainham Gaol Apart from that, the General Post Office also holds a loose dark connection, namely to the Easter Rising of 1916 – see under Ireland . You can see bullet holes and bits chipped off the main columns at the front that are lasting signs of the fighting for this landmark building in the English crushing of the Rising. A bit further south at the bottom of O'Connell Street by the head of O'Connell Bridge take a closer look at the O'Connell Monument. The man himself at the top (the "Great Liberator" – who had made his name in the first half of the 19th century as a campaigner for the rights of Catholics) is less interesting here – instead look at the female figure at the foot of his column at the north-east corner of the pedestal. The hole you see in her breast is also a bullet hole from the Easter Rising fighting! Dublin has its own tourist attraction that picks up the grim legacy of the Great Famine (see under Ireland ), namely the "Jeanie Johnston" – a replica of one of the so-called "coffin ships" that transported emigrants across the Atlantic to their new homes in America. The Jeanie Johnston herself wasn't actually so bad – nobody on her 16 or so emigration voyages actually died.